Superimposed
by Lupegarou4488
Summary: AU - Seven years after Jason cut all ties with his family, they seemed determined to drag him back into the fold whether he wants to come or not.
1. Damian

**Disclaimer: I do not own, I make no money and I wish desperately that I did both**

**A/N: This is an non superhero AU. You have been warned. As always, please review. **

**Chapter One - Damian**

The townhouse is small, was his first thought. Damian stood at the front of the house, the bodyguard that had been assigned to him looming over his much smaller form. He was propelled to the door by the man, standing next to him, proud and as tall as he could just as he was taught. The bodyguard rang the bell and, when the door wasn't immediately answered, rang it again. A pounding sound was heard and a young man, with black hair and blue eyes similar to Damian's own opened the door, taking them both in.

"Can I help you?" His tone was cautious, but he gave Damian a small grin, which Damian didn't bother to return – he didn't want to be here, he wanted to be home, where he could prove that he wasn't a failure.

"This is Damian Wayne –his custody has been transferred to his father and –" Damian watched with a small amount of amusement as the boy's eyes widened, darting between the bodyguard and himself.

"Wait – what?" The boy frowned at them both. "Bruce isn't here right now – you can't just leave him here!" Damian scowled at him, not liking that he was being dismissed by someone that was barely older him. The bodyguard shrugged and handed the boy a stack of papers.

"Not my problem – I was paid to deliver him, he's delivered – here's all the paperwork. Mistress Talia says that he is now Wayne's problem, so have fun." Damian hid the hurt that those words caused and keep his face blank even as the boy's mouth opened and closed like a fish.

"You can't just leave a kid here! That's illegal!" The man didn't seem to care, as he turned and moved briskly down the sidewalk and got behind the wheel of the car, driving off and leaving the two boys on the steps.

"Well? Are you going to invite me in or is that also beyond your ability to comprehend?" Damian knew he sounded waspish, but didn't care. The boy frowned at him, but moved to the side in a silent invitation. Damian stepped into the house, examining the front hallway as the boy headed further back into the house, picking up a phone and dialing a number.

"Bruce?" A pause. "No, I'm fine, but some guy just dropped a kid off on the doorstep. He said his name was Damian and Talia said he was your problem now." Another longer pause and the boy hung up, turning to face Damian, who was determined to keep himself under control.

"Um…yeah. So, Bruce is on his way home – he should be here in about an hour." The boy gave another small smile of greeting. "I'm Tim."

Damian glared at him, hoping that it would discourage the other boy from trying to talk to him. And it seemed to work since Tim retreated to somewhere else in the house after depositing him in the main room with instructions to "stay put".

He stood when his father entered the house, studying the man that had helped conceive him even as he was studied in turn. Damian watched as the man picked up the stack of papers and flipped through them silently, before turning and heading up the stairs to the second floor.

That was it. No greeting, no acknowledgement that he was even there before going to another part of the house. Damian shoved the sick feeling in the pit of his stomach back down and quickly headed in the direction that his father had vanished to. He found him by following his voice – coming up to the study in time to make out the tail end of a conversation.

"…send him to me – there's no place for him here." Damian froze, hand hovering just above the doorknob. "He shouldn't be here – he should be with you." Damian silently retreated back to the living room, any hopes that he might have harbored about this new place turning to ash. His father didn't want him here. His father, the one that his mother had placed on a pedestal that he knew he could never hope to match, did not want him.

"Hey – Damian, right?" Damian looked up as the other – Tim – came into the living room, followed by another, older male. He gave a curt nod, not trusting himself to speak, but the older man didn't seem to mind, even if Tim's mouth twisted into a small frown.

"Well, Tim just finished setting up your room for you – it's pretty bare, but you can add to it later and I was getting ready to order a pizza. You have any toppings you like?"

"Pizza has little nutritional value." Damian felt the need to point out, which was apparently the wrong thing to say, as Tim's jaw dropped and the man chuckled. Damian barely controlled the embarrassed flush that followed the laughter.

"Maybe not, but that's what we're having since Alfred just got back from vacation and you definitely don't want me or Bruce cooking." Damian scowled at the information – he did not want to know more about his father – his father didn't want to know anything about him. The man waited, but when Damian didn't answer he shrugged. "Alright then. You don't care, I want the works, Timmy will only eat plain cheese and Bruce is going to rush out just as it gets here to go back to the office."

The man (who was identified as Dick Grayson later in the evening) was correct in his predictions – Bruce had left the house with nothing more than a curt goodbye nearly forty five minutes later, barely pausing to acknowledge his sons. Grayson and Tim both seemed to accept that behavior as normal and so Damian mentally placed his father in the same category as all the other adults in his life thus far; a vague, barely there authority figure that would show no interest in him.

-Time skip to the next day-

Damian barely slept, his body still on Eastern European Time, and he knew that he would probably collapse later that day from sheer exhaustion – he had been up nearly forty eight hours by this point. So when Alfred Pennyworth had arrived precisely at eight, his first impression of Damian was less than flattering – the boy was swearing in fluent Urdu as he struggled to find something to eat that he was familiar with.

"I don't believe that telling the refrigerator to perform various impolite deeds with itself will help you accomplish your goals, young man."

Damian stopped and sent the older man a withering glare, but he did step away from the fridge, allowing Alfred the chance to see for himself what was in the fridge. Sadly, since Alfred had spent the better part of the last month in England visiting his brother and niece, the fridge is lacking in anything resembling actual food, though it was nearly overflowing with takeout containers. Damian watched as Alfred briefly closed his eyes as though in pain before shutting the door and turning to the ten year old.

"What would you like to have for breakfast?" Damian blinked at him in shock – he hadn't expected to actually get any input into the decision. He ate what was put in front of him at mealtimes. Discounting last night, this was the first time he had been allowed input into his dietary choices.

"Do you know how to make Ful medames?" Alfred's brow rose at the question, but he answered readily enough.

"I am somewhat familiar with the dish from my travels abroad – it shouldn't take more than thirty minutes to make it once I've acquired the ingredients." Alfred re-buttoned his coat, having never actually had the chance to remove it. "Would you like to accompany me to the store so that you may see the ingredients for yourself?"

Damian paused and, after a brief internal struggle (very brief, he'd never been to America before and was curious about it), nodded and followed Alfred out of the door.

-Time skip of a few days-

He had found the room purely by accident while he had been in the attic, trying to learn more about his father's family and to get away from his father's confidante and other two sons. They were too loud, too American for him to feel comfortable with and so he had begun to look for a place to retreat to when they became too overwhelming. It had been a boy's room, once upon a time, and was covered in posters of sports teams and cars. But he could tell that years had passed since anyone had set foot in it and every surface was covered in a thick layer of dust. He hadn't gotten across the threshold before he had been drawn back downstairs by Pennyworth's (old man, his father's surrogate father) summons.

He hadn't mentioned the room then, not wanting to answer questions about why he had been in the attic in the first place, but curiosity had drawn him back up to the small room and he had begun the laborious process of cleaning it, looking for some clue as to the original inhabitant's identity. It was time consuming, but since his father spent vast stretches of time away from home and their eldest brother worked and lived in Bludhaven, it was usually just him and Drake in the house and they tended to avoid each other.

Damian's fault, he knew, but his father had him now, why would he need another son? And Drake…Drake was everything that Damian needed to be: smart and hardworking, quiet and obedient. Everything he _wasn't_. And that grated – that some other boy was everything that he needed to and never would be.

He found the picture on accident one day, as it had been kicked under the bed, the glass covering shattered and the frame cracked. The time looked to be early summer, given the tank tops the three subjects were wearing. It was his father, much younger, maybe a decade or so ago, and two young men, boys really. One was Grayson - the smile hadn't changed, even if he was lacking the distinctive scar on his upper arm - and the other was a boy, maybe a few years older than Damian was now, with a smirk that seemed like a challenge to the world. A tuft of his hair was pure white, a startling contrast to raven black.

Damian had taken the picture down to his own room and placed it among the few family pictures he owned, near the back, where the rest of the family would be unable to easily find it. The Boy was his secret for now and Damian had no desire to share him, not yet. He finished cleaning the room and changed the sheets, creating a tiny bolt hole he could vanish to when the newness and strangeness of this family began to overwhelm him.

Because America was nothing like England and definitely nothing like the home in the Middle East that he had spent his early years. The customs, the food, everything was wrong and different and it felt like he was being expected to adjust immediately. He was enrolled in the same private school that Drake currently attended, but was dreading the start of the year – his accent, his skin color, his eyes…none of that would allow him to blend in with a population of fair skinned, forward Americans that would notice how different he was.

He was used to his father's standoffishness - that was a standard parental response in his mother and grandfather's circles - but Grayson's incessant touching and Pennyworth' constant inquiries and Drake's watching, always watching grated. He wasn't used to the attention he was being given.

But when he retreated to the room and looked into the nooks and crannies of The Boy, he could escape. He learned The Boy liked cars, quite a bit, as there were stacks and stacks of magazines dedicated to the topic scattered all over the room. This was in sharp contrast to the shelves, which had classics such as Dickinson and Austen on them. Damian began to read them, trying to find the appeal to such works. He didn't, but the books helped to pass the time. The books by Mark Twain, however, he devoured and immediately went hunting for more at the library when he managed to convince Grayson to take him.

There were a few gun and weapons related paraphernalia shoved into the back of the closet and Damian read those too, understanding the pull of the forbidden – despite the fact that father worked in law enforcement, he forbade guns in his house and around his children. There were boxes of model cars and planes, most put together, some not. He spent one weekend that he was alone in the house with only Drake putting one together. It had turned out adequately and the model had also migrated down to his room, placed on a shelf next to one of The Boy's books on poems.

Drake had noticed his frequent absences, but hadn't commented on them, instead seeming to steer Pennyworth's attention to other matters when the man was over, checking up on them. That happened around once a week if their father was home, two to three times a week when he was not. That also grated - they were seventeen and ten, they needed minimal adult supervision. And Damian knew that it wasn't Drake they were checking up on – he was the one they didn't trust.

He found a small pile of Playboy under the bed in a box labeled socks and returned them to their hiding place - they held no appeal for him yet. But it wasn't until he was looking through the drawers that he found The Boy's name, carved into the back of a drawer - at least he assumed it was The Boy's name. Damian gently traced the letters with his fingers, memorizing them. The letters are sharply carved, hard, straight lines with few curves.

"Jason Todd." Damian rolled the words around on his tongue and grinned to himself. "Jason Todd."


	2. Tim

**Disclaimer: Don't own, wish I did. Am making no money, see previous sentence.**

**A/N: Enjoy and please review**

**Chapter Two – Tim **

Tim glanced up from where he had been reading his physics book for the test later in the week just in time to see his (new, so new the ink wasn't dry on the custody papers yet) brother go walking by his bedroom door. Not that that was really unusual lately - Damian had been spending a lot of time in the attic for whatever reason. Tim honestly didn't care that much what his brother was doing, so long as Damian left him alone while he was doing it. It wasn't that he hated the kid - he'd tried to be friendly, but the brat just threw up an ice wall and Tim only had so much room for punishment. So he tried to pretend that Damian didn't exist.

But this was the sixth time in the last half hour that Damian had walked by his room (three going into the attic, three going back from the attic) and now Tim was curious. So he wandered down the hall to Damian's room just in time to watch him reverently place an old model car on his bookshelf.

Tim knows that car - an impala, black ("_because black is the only color an impala can be baby bird, duh_") - and he moves forward swiftly, plucking the car off the shelf. Damian turns to him with an angry cry, but Tim doesn't care. Because this was _his_ car.

"Where did you get this?" Tim doesn't bother to control his tone, suddenly inexplicably angry. Damian presses his lips together and Tim valiantly resists the urge to hit him. "I asked you a question, you little troll. Where did you get this?"

"It's mine, Drake!" Damian's voice is shrill with anger, but Tim ignores that. "Give it back!"

"I helped make this, it's _mine_!" And Tim has never shouted that loud since Damian joined their messed up family, so his younger brother is shocked into silence. "I helped make it. It's - It's mine, Damian. Where did you get it?"

Tim really isn't sure how to describe the look that crosses Damian's face at that particular moment. Anger and guilt and curiosity and longing and then his face is back to that blank mask that Tim has also perfected and drives everyone else crazy. They just don't know how to read it right, that's all, but Tim does. Because he knows about walls and expectations that Dick and Bruce don't understand, despite their efforts.

"Damian." Tim manages to get his voice under control. "Where. Did. You. Get. This. Car?" Mostly. But he hadn't seen this car –not since he was ten and everything went to hell.

"You helped to assemble this?" Damian's pointing finger indicates the "this" fairly well. "So you know who Jason Todd is?"

Tim's hands tighten involuntarily around the car at the question. His older brother's name hasn't been mentioned under this roof for nearly seven years. Not since...not since what Tim thinks of as "The Incident", capital letters and everything. Bruce refuses to acknowledge that he even still has a son in between his oldest and third oldest. Dick has followed in his adopted father's footsteps and Alfred...Tim doesn't mention Jason to him, ever, because he can't stand the pure sorrow and regret that crosses the elderly man's face at the mention of the name.

"Yes. I knew Jason - or thought I did anyway." Damian scowls at the cryptic answer, but Tim really can't bring himself care. Jason...Jason is a complicated mess that is never going to get better. Will never have the chance to get better, now.

"That is unhelpful, Drake. Why does he have a bedroom in the attic if no one acknowledges his existence?" Tim is shocked - he had assumed that Bruce would have cleaned the room out while he and Dick had been in the hospital, but apparently not. Tim had never gone up into the attic after his return home and Dick would have had no reason to go up those stairs - he had his own apartment now and was rarely around.

Tim turned and darted down the hall, towards the attic, Damian hot on his heels, and took the stairs two at a time. He's across the wide open space and in the little bedroom before Damian can try and stop him. The threshold is as far as he gets before he's assaulted by memories.

_"What the hell do you want, kid?" Jason is lying on his bed, staring at the ceiling. Tim has no idea how he knew that Tim was even there, because he knows how to be quiet, how not to draw attention to himself. Tim shifts nervously, not sure how to address this older brother - Dick is easy, all smiles and hugs - but this brother..._

_"I'm sorry!" It's the only thing he can think of to say. Jason finally turns his head far enough to actually look at him and Tim flinches from the anger he can see there. "I'm sorry! I didn't mean to take your place! I can leave!" _

_Tim knows he looks like he's about ready to cry, but he took this boy's spot and took his family. And now the boy is back and Tim isn't sure that he should stay, because that would mean he was An Inconvenience and that is Something That You Do Not Do. Jason sighs and swings his legs over the side of the bed, sitting up and giving Tim an inscrutable look. _

_"And where the fuck would you go kid?" Tim's eyes widen at the vulgarity - because You Do Not Curse. Jason sounds honestly curious and Tim quickly answers. _

_"I'd, I'd go live with Mrs. Mac. She'd take care of me." _

_Jason sighs again and runs a hand through his hair. "Kid, you don't have to leave, alright? Just...I...Dammit. Come here."_

_Tim moves cautiously closer as Jason pulls a box off of a shelf, stopping a good five feet from the larger boy. Jason looks up and rolls his eyes, beckoning him closer. "You ever made a model car before?" _

_Tim shook his head and Jason offered him a small grin – it's not a happy grin, really, but Tim likes it better than the sideways glares and narrowed eyes. "Well, come here, then, baby bird, and I'll show you." _

_Tim has no idea where the nickname had suddenly come from, but…it's nice. He's never had a _real _nickname before. So is the next hour and a half that Jason spends helping him put together the model, patiently answering Tim's questions about the car and models in general. _

"Drake!" Tim comes out of the trip down memory lane to see Damian glaring at him, arms crossed over his chest. "How do you know this Jason Todd? Why has father never mentioned him?"

"He's our brother and he...he did something and dad's never forgiven him. I don't even know if he's still alive." Tim doesn't bother to point out that Bruce hasn't been home for more than four days out of the past three weeks since Damian has come to stay with them. So there wasn't really any time to tell him anything.

"Well, I want to know." Damian makes the statement a demand and Tim glares at him, the arrogance of the statement grating on his nerves.

"And I want to have a flying car. Disappointment abounds." Then the little troll smirks at him.

"And I can actually have my want become a reality, Drake. How hard can it be to find one person?"

Tim is sorely tempted to let the brat find out, but resists the urge. Jason was willing to reach out to him...maybe he can reach out to Damian with this. As a peace offering or truce. Or at least a cease fire from the little snips and verbal cuts that they've begun taking at each other. Tim is self aware enough to know that eventually the verbal spars will graduate into physical ones as Damian grows. And Tim has had enough fighting in the family.

"Do you want help?" Damian almost refuses, Tim can tell, but the boy manages a tight nod. Tim accepts that. After all, baby steps. Everything starts with reaching out and baby steps.

It takes Tim a week to figure out that Jason is even still alive – because Jason Todd is not exactly an uncommon name. Tim does most of the research for this part, not wanting – not ready – to explain to Damian what had happened to rip their family apart. Damian, for his part, is patient and doesn't go prying behind Tim's back (Tim is surprised and grateful. It would be easy enough, after all, to find what Damian wants to know in old newspaper articles).

"He was in the Marines – he was honorably discharged last year." The announcement is made over a dinner of grilled cheese and tomato soup, something that Tim can cook well reliably. Alfred had come and gone yesterday, making sure the two of them had enough food and that they hadn't descended into squalor. Which the older man seemed to think was an always present danger – but Tim is neat and Damian is neat enough for a ten year old, so the house is never really dirty, dirty. Just well used.

"Where did he go after that?" Tim shrugs at the question and continues as Damian opens his mouth to complain, "I'm not sure – it's not like the military keeps those records." And it had been a pain for Tim to figure that Jason had even been discharged last year…and that had been when Tim had known what service Jason had been in. He didn't want to think about the nightmare it would have been if he had had to search through all six services.

"Father would –" Tim cuts him off with a sharp hand gesture and Damian glowers at him. Tim doesn't care, at the moment, knowing that bring Bruce into this would result in nothing more than an edict to stop looking.

"We are not involving dad in this." Damian looks ready to protest, but Tim doesn't give him the chance. "He'll make us stop and then he might get us a babysitter to make sure we don't keep looking."

Both boys shudder at the thought of actually have to answer to an adult all of the time. As it is, Alfred comes by for a few hours a few times a week and Dick has a tendency to just drop by whenever he felt like it. The only constant adult in Tim's life had been Mrs. Mac, a sweet elderly lady that had continued to check on him after he had moved in with Bruce – but she had died four years ago. And Damian had only had a constantly revolving train of tutors that came and went with regular frequency. Neither boy was sure what they would do with an adult that was always around.

So it takes Tim another month before he narrows down the Jason Peter Todd (age 24, former Marine, Staff Sergeant, blood type AB) to two possibilities. One lives out in California and the other lives in Gotham City, near The Narrows.

"So? Are we going to determine if it's him or not?" Tim is torn between wanting to see Jason again (the memories from when Jason came back and before everything happened are nice) and deleting the information and forgetting he had ever had it. Damian scowls at the lack of an answer and lightly kicks Tim in the shin to get his attention.

"Yeah. Just let me…yeah. After school." Because if they wait any longer, Tim is going to back out (he's never as brave as he likes to act. Anything he does involves hours of agonizing followed by gritting his teeth and treating it like he would a splinter – pull and get it over with as quickly as possible) and that would not be acceptable. Not to Damian and certainly not to him.

**A/N: please review**


	3. Jason

**Disclaimer:...I'm writing here, what do you think?**

**A/N: As always, please review**

**Chapter 3 – Jason**

Jason doesn't notice the two boys standing in the doorway of his garage at first. Of course, that's completely understandable, given that he's got his head under the hood of what should be a beautiful car (a 1967 Shelby Mustang that the owner has painted a sickening shade of _pink_) trying to figure out how the owner fucked up the engine as badly as they did.

"Should have fucking blown up before it got this bad." The complaint is a common one, so Roy, who is under the car shining a light so Jason can see better, ignores him. "Damn idiots that can't take care of a..." Jason's complaints trail away to unintelligible mumblings as he leans further forward.

"Jason?" Jason drops the socket wrench he was holding at the sound of _that voice_ and stands up fast enough that he slams his head on the underside of the hood of the car. He ignores Roy's swearing (the wrench managed to clip him on the upper jaw) and turns around fast enough to give himself whiplash.

Jason can't honestly do anything but stare - it's been seven years since he's seen anyone in his family and for this family member to track him down... he really wasn't ever expecting this. Roy finally makes it to his feet and glares at him as the red head gingerly touches his teeth.

"What the hell, Todd? What the fuck could - can I help you?" Roy switches conversations in mid sentence and Jason appreciates that. He needs a few seconds to get his bearings. This person should not be standing here, in his shop.

"We wished to speak with him." Jason resists the urge to get sarcastic with the kind on principle alone at the tone of voice he uses. Or break the finger that's pointing at him…Jason starts counting to ten in an effort to get his temper (which is so, so easy to set off and something that he's spent the last seven years learning to control).

"Sorry." Tim - Tim who is still smaller than he should be - is apologizing for the brat. "We were wondering if we could ask you some questions?"

"In my office." Jason points to the only other door in the garage and waits until the two boys head in that direction before turning to Roy. "Anybody needs anything, I'm busy."

"Alright...Sarge, you gonna share with the class?" Jason ignores Roy's question and follows his brother(s?). He has a few questions of his own. Namely, why the hell is _he_ even here?

Tim is sitting in one of the customer chairs, watching the door, as the younger one wanders around, looking at the paraphernalia that Jason has managed to amass in his year here. They both turn to look as he softly shuts the door behind him and sits in his chair.

"Tim." That's apparently all he needs to say, because the younger one drops down into the other customer chair with a huff of breath and an, "I told you Drake."

"Shut up, Damian." The rejoinder is said with the ease of long practice as Tim refuses to take his eyes off Jason - which Jason finds to be slightly unnerving.

"Alright." Jason leans forward, resting his arms on the desk. "What the hell are you two doing here? And actually, who the hell are you, brat?"

"We're...we..." Jason watches as Tim flounders for an explanation. So does the brat - Damian? - though he's watching with exasperation and Jason can almost see the point he gets fed up with Tim's incoherent-ness.

"I found your room in the attic and endeavored to find you - Drake assisted me." Jason's gut clenched - his room was still...? He had assumed that Bruce or Alfred would have thrown anything to do with him away. But apparently his old attic room was still intact.

"Still not telling me who you are..." Jason prodded, wanting that point cleared up. Followed by why the kid wanted to contact him in the first place.

"I am Damian Wayne - the biological son of Bruce Wayne." If the kid was expecting Jason to be impressed, he was about to be disappointed. Jason didn't care if Bruce had managed to have a litter of kittens in the last seven years - he just wanted to know why his old life was suddenly being dropped in his lap. He couldn't leave Gotham – the city had a way of drawing you back, but he'd be damned if he allowed his old life to interfere with this new one.

"Great. You've seen the black sheep of the family, now get out." Jason stood, getting no satisfaction from the way that Tim flinched as he rose to his full height. His younger brother was scared of him. The brat – Damian – stood off to the side, just watching him, his face expressionless. That actually grated a bit, Tim's reaction, though Jason could admit he probably deserved it. He turned and made it to the door before Tim managed to actually make an unintelligible noise.

Jason pauses, but doesn't turn, his hand on the doorknob. "It should be fairly obvious that I didn't want to talk to anyone in the family, _replacement_." Jason knows that Tim hated (hates) that particular description. "So get out, take the brat with you, and leave me alone. I'm fine without any of you – I have been for years."

Jason leaves the office and grabs his jacket on the way to the door, ignoring Roy's questions and not bothering to see if the two boys were leaving. He needed to clear his head and try to get to a more level place, mentally. He had thought that he might have been alright, if he had seen his family, but this pretty much proved that theory was shit.

Timmy hadn't even done anything to him and Jason had just hurt him just as bad, if not worse, than he had seven years ago. Probably worse – who said that stupid saying about sticks and stones was an idiot. And he had pulled out the one word that he knew had, before he left, hit every . single. one. of Tim's insecurity buttons.

Jason came to a stop in front of an older brownstone building and eyed the large set of double doors with a resignation. He hated coming here and dreaded it at the same time he returned, faithfully, at least once a week. Sometimes more, if he felt overwhelmed enough. He started forward and pushed open one of the doors, disappearing into the dimly lit hall.

**A/N: Please Review**


	4. Jonathan

**Disclaimer: **Do not own, am not making a profit

**A/N: **Read, enjoy, Review (please)

**Chapter Four – Jonathan Crane**

Jonathan Crane was considered a brilliant psychologist by his peers. He knew this. He knew that his theories on fears and their effects on the mind were ground breaking. So when he had announced his decision to move to Gotham in order to counsel law enforcement and returning veterans, his colleges had expressed stunned disbelief. But Crane knew that if he wanted to find people with the most interesting reactions to fear, the military veterans and law enforcement would be the group to study.

So he had spent the last four years working out of Gotham City, counseling the many veterans and law enforcement personnel that seemed to flock to Gotham despite of its bad reputation. But one of his favorites had to be the man that had just walked in the door, slamming it behind him.

"Jason." Jonathan watched with mild amusement as Jason dropped onto the couch with a snarled, "Hey doc."

"You're early for your appointment." Jason's regular appointment was once a week, but he, like all the veterans that Jonathan worked with had a standing invitation to come in as long as he wasn't in a session with another patient. "Did something happen?"

"No." Jonathan merely raised an eyebrow at the snapped response and made a note of the quick temper. Something had happened, but Jason would wait until he was good and ready to actually talk about it.

Jonathan used the time that they sat in silence to study the young man in front of him – easily six feet and probably a little over two hundred pounds, all of it muscle mass. But despite that, Jason could make himself blend in with a crowd (Jonathan had seen happen once, at a charity lunch that Jason had been coerced into by his Aunt Harriet. It had been amazing to watch as the normally outgoing and loud young man had seemingly shrunk in on himself until no one had even noticed he was there).

"I saw my brothers today." Jonathan blinked at the seemingly out of nowhere comment, but didn't reply. Jason had never talked about his family to him, having apparently trodden that ground with his previous psychologist. When Jason seemed disinclined to speak, Jonathan decided to prod – that was a part of his job. "Oh?"

"Tim. Tim, he came to the shop today." Jonathan listened patiently as Jason described the encounter, already making mental notes to start a study on families and the way that fear drives their interactions.

"I need to apologize." Jonathan liked that about Jason; he came to his conclusions without any help from Jonathan, which left Jonathan free to mentally write out his next thesis.

"That would be the best course of action. Taking out your anger with your father and older brother on the two youngest was not wise Jason." Jason gave a grunt of agreement before sinking back into the couch.

"I know that – but seeing them. There. I wasn't ready to see them. Any of them."

"Then my advice to you Jason would be that you apologize to your brothers and request that they not contact you again." Jonathan was firm on this point. "If you aren't ready to interact with your family, you should make a clean break with them. Otherwise you will never move on and heal."

Jonathan made a mental note to talk to Jason's previous psychologist, Sean Garrison, and see if the man would be willing to offer any insight into how to best help the young man sitting in front of him. If he could get Jason to a healthier place than he was now, perhaps he would be willing to talk to Jonathan about his time serving in Afghanistan. Not that Jason wasn't in a healthy place, really. But he could always be healthier.

The rest of the session was spent with Jonathan attempting to coax some information about Jason's experiences in Afghanistan out of him, much to Jason's amusement and Jonathan's frustration. Jonathan knew that Jason enjoyed the mind games that he regularly employed to get his patients talking and rarely fell for them.

It wasn't until after Jason had left that Crane began to write down the events of the session in his casebook. Not the one that would be shown to his patients, but the one that he used to keep track of potentially interesting information that could be sold to the highest bidder. And in Gotham, there were a lot of people willing to pay money for whatever would scare people the most.

Just as he was finishing writing down the trivial information that Jason had given, the door to his office was flung open and bounced off the wall. Jonathan didn't do anything more than look up and give the man a searching look before returning to his writing. This one could wait until he was done.

Jonathan finished putting the finishing touches on the notes and closed the book, turning to give the man all of his attention. "Special Agent Elliot, how may I help you?"

**A/N:** Review please


	5. Dick

Disclaimer: Don't own, wish I did and am making no money whatsoever.

"Alfred, I don't know what's going on with Tim and Damian." Dick was not having a good day and having Alfred call him to see if something was wrong with his younger brothers was not helping. "Whenever I've seen them, they've been secretive, but that's just..." he waved his arm in the air, searching for the right word."…Them. I'm sure they're fine."

He looked up in time to see a black haired man stride into the bullpen and make a beeline for his desk - this day just kept getting better and better. "Listen, I'll stop by later this week and see if I can't get Tim to open up and find out what's going on. But for now, I need to get back to work. "

The phone was back in its cradle by the time that Lucas Bishop, Internal Affairs, made it through the maze of unhelpful officers. Dick got the stink eye from the older officer, but ignored it. Bruce on his worst day gave a better stink eye.

"Grayson, your report needs to be corrected." Dick knew without asking which report he was talking about - an incident report that he had filed accusing Grant Wilson of beating a suspect. Which he had and then the kid had turned out to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The problem was that Grant's father was the Chief of Police and that Dick wasn't buying the party line of letting the other man get away with murder, literally in some cases. Dick knew that he was walking on thin enough ice as it was, since he was one of the few officers that wouldn't accept bribes. This was only going to make things worse for him and Amy couldn't be there to watch his back all of the time.

"No." Dick gave the black haired man standing over him and exasperated look and tried not to look too irritated. It probably wasn't a good idea to tick off the guy from internal affairs, but Dick also wasn't about to let some idiot with stick up his ass get in the way of him doing his job. "I stand by exactly what I put down on the report."

"You're accusing Officer Wilson of beating a suspect." Dick shifted in his chair and wondered, not for the first time, whether he should just give up here and take Bruce up on his offer. He shut that thought down almost as soon as it formed. He was not taking any of Bruce's charity.

"Because he did." Dick noticed that he had a message alert on his computer and gave the other man an insincere smile. "And I do have some paperwork that I need to fill out, so if we could continue this some other time...?" He let the question trail off and hoped Bishop got the hint. He did and backed away from Dick's desk.

"We will be continuing this conversation later, Grayson."

Dick ignored him and opened the email, skimming over it with disinterest. It was this departmental memo, which the Chief sent out every Monday. It wasn't until he got to an entry on the middle of the list that he did a double take and reread the whole thing. He reached for his phone and hit the first speed dial button. "Bruce? I'm forwarding you an email - you're going to want to read it."

Dick hung up without waiting for an answer and pushed himself back from the desk and escaped the room, heading for the sticky humidity of outside. It was better than the chill of the air conditioning, which was working for once, and gave him some privacy. Few souls were willing to endure the weather for no good reason except for the smokers but they stayed in their designated area.

He walked, needing to work off the excess energy. This... this should not be happening. Not now. Dick had thought he was gone forever. Gone or dead, and Dick couldn't say which prospect he had hoped was the case. How was Tim going to take it? How was Alfred going to take it?

The older man had been devastated in the wake of the worst tragedy that had hit their tiny, makeshift family and Dick didn't want to break the news to Alfred. But someone had to and Bruce would be too busy turning into a control freak to tell him. Not that Bruce was a fountain of forthrightness to begin with.

Dick slowly dialed the older man's number. "Alfred, it's Dick. We need to talk." A long pause. "He's back."

Dick made it to Alfred's in time to join him for dinner. The meal was silent, both men lost in their thoughts. It wasn't until afterwards, when they were sitting on the balcony of Alfred's condo, that they actually started to talk.

"He's not going to take this well." Not a question, coming from Dick, who had the most insight into his father's mind, aside from Alfred.

"No. Bruce has never taken things outside of his control well." Alfred took a sip of his tea and stared into the distance. "Something like this… that hits so close to home for him; and you and Timothy, of course, will not sit easily."

Dick drained the beer he had been drinking and reached for another. Alfred would cut him off at four and he would make sure that Dick slept in the guest bedroom. "So, what are we going to do?"

"We are going to make sure that he doesn't do something rash and that the boys are both safe." A pause. "It is all we can do."

Dick really didn't have anything to say to that, so he let silence descend on them again. It was actually pretty peaceful up here – this high over the city, you could pretend that there wasn't any of the city noise.

"Speaking of your brothers, Richard, I admit to some concern." Dick sighed and collapsed back in the chair.

"What's wrong?"

"They've been going to the Narrows." Dick sat bolt upright at that news. There was no reason for either of them to be going to that part of town. And Tim should know better; that was something that he and Bruce had both drilled into Tim: which areas of town he was not allowed to go in and how to get out of him if he did find himself there.

"What? Why?" If that was why they had been keeping secrets, he was going to belt both of them. They shouldn't be that reckless and Tim, at least, knew that the Narrows were completely off limits. No exceptions.

"That is why I had called you. Neither Timothy or Damian will talk to me and both deny ever going there in the first place." Alfred's revelation nearly had Dick's jaw dropping. Tim didn't usually blatantly lie. Oh, he misdirected, withheld and obfuscated with the best of them, but he rarely lied outright.

"I'll look into it Alfred, but tomorrow. Right now I need to go to bed – I've got graveyard shift in six hours."

**A/N:** Here's Dick's chapter where there is a lot of talking and not much gets accomplished. Sorry it took so long and is so short. Also, over the last five chapters, who can name the supporting cast and where they're from? Because no OCs were harmed during the writing of this fic. And seriously, please tell me how I did.


	6. Damian 2

**Disclaimer:** I don't own – I wish I did and I am making no money off of this

**A/N:** And sorry it took so long to get up. My apologies. But enjoy the next chapter, let me know what you think.

The room was a mess, the posters torn off the walls, models thrown there in a fit of rage, and the books ripped from the shelves to cover the floor like a carpet. On his better days, Damian admitted that his reaction to Todd's rejection was childish. He had never met the man before that day, so he shouldn't be so upset. Today was not a better day.

It had been a week since they had gone to the shop and met with Todd. Since the man had stormed out of the office, leaving them there to quickly retreat under the red head's glare. It bothered Damian to be dismissed so casually, but he would have been able to ignore it, except that Drake… Something had changed.

Not outwardly, not entirely. Drake still went to classes and interacted appropriately with the other children at school, but it was as though he _faded_. He mentally retreated into himself. Alfred had noticed that something had happened, but Drake was a good actor and so the older man had let it go.

Damian had accidently walked in on Drake talking to Grayson. Calling the older man back had been enlightening. Apparently Dra – _Tim_ – had wanted to talk or have his brother come over, but Grayson claimed to be busy with an unexpected case. He promised to be by "later", whatever that meant. But Damian suspected that Tim saw it as another rejection.

What was more worrying than Tim's retreat into himself was the fact that the older boy refused to eat. Not consciously, perhaps, but Damian noticed that his food intake had begun to drop and Tim would ignore food set in front of him in favor of whatever project or activity he would be currently engaged in.

Attempts by Damian to make sure that the older boy ate had failed and he wasn't yet desperate enough to ask Grayson or Pennyworth for help. Not yet, because that would mean having to explain _why_ Tim was like this. And Damian wasn't sure he could come up with a reason that wouldn't involve explaining what had happened. And he refused to admit that he felt guilty since, after all, it had been his idea to track down Todd in the first place.

He was reluctant to do so and he could come up with no plausible reason why. It wasn't out of loyalty to Todd - it was his fault that Tim had retreated so thoroughly, after all. It might have been out of a budding sense of loyalty to Tim, who would probably be blamed for the whole fiasco, being older. Damian cocked his head to the side, considering. Todd had lived with Tim for at least six months before "The Incident", whatever it was, had happened. So he should know how to help Tim and Damian was going to make him, because this was his fault to begin with.

It took another two days to be able to slip away from the house Pennyworth noticing. The older gentleman had apparently noticed that something was wrong, because he, at least, spent more time at the house than he normally did. Father had not, not that Damian had expected him to. After all, his children apparently came in a distant second to his work.

The bus ride seemed longer, this time around, without Tim to tell him about the landmarks and history of the areas they passed and the anxiety that coiled around Damian's middle. If this was what caring for someone was like, Damian understood why his mother and grandfather were so against it. It was not a pleasant feeling, worrying about someone else.

His stop was four blocks from the shop and Damian spent the entire walk coming up with ways to convince Todd to help. Luckily, he was there and the red head was not. Damian stood in the doorway for second before clearing his throat to get Todd's attention. The man looked up from the car he was examining and frowned.

"What the hell do you want, brat?" Good. He remembered. That would make this much easier.

"How do you get Ti - Drake to eat?" Damian bypassed social etiquette in order to expedite getting the information he wanted. Todd, for his part, looked nonplussed.

"Excuse me?" The older man shifted so that he was actually looking at Damian. "How do I what?"

"How do you get Drake to eat when he refuses to do so? The question was not hard, Todd, and you are obligated to answer, since it is your fault he refuses to eat." Damian was sure that he imagined the slightly guilty look that appeared on Todd's face before vanishing.

"Whatever the replacement does is not my problem." Jason turned back to the car. "Call Dickie if he needs help that badly."

Damian had, up to that point, kept his temper. But that was the last straw. It would have cost Todd nothing, _nothing_ to give Damian an answer and the man was refusing to do that. He grabbed the nearest projectile - a wrench of some sort - and hurled at the man. It missed, but Todd jerked back and around, trying and failing to keep his balance.

He rolled to his knees and then into a crouch, never taking his eyes off Damian, who had grabbed another wrench. "Kid, you throw that thing and I will beat the crap out of you." He was completely serious, but Damian didn't care. "That was a hundred thousand dollar car you just dented."

"And it's your fault that Tim won't eat and that he won't talk to anybody!" Damian's voice rose. "If he dies it will be your fault! He looked up to you and I don't know why he would, because you are a..." Damian searched for an appropriate insult. "Yela'an sabe'a jad lak!"

Todd looked... actually Damian wasn't sure what to call the look on his face. It wasn't anything that he was familiar with. So he let the wrench fly. Todd snatched it out of the air and was suddenly in front of him, grabbing him by both arms and lifting him up. Damian hadn't even seen him move and he felt a tiny trickle of fear in his stomach.

"Let go of me!" Damian struggled, but Todd ignored him, striding towards the office. "I said let go! I hate you!"

Todd managed to get them both into the office and the door shut before letting Damian go... and getting attacked by a livid ten year old. Todd took the blows in silence, deflecting only the ones that might have caused anything more than bruises. It wasn't until Damian had exhausted himself that Todd relaxed.

"You done?" Damian glared at him but nodded. He didn't understand the man, who would verbally rip one of his younger brothers to shreds but allow the other to vent his frustrations on him. "Good. Now - I'll tell you how to get Tim to eat and then I want you to leave."

"You need to apologize to him." Damian wasn't sure what had prompted that to come out of his mouth, but he wasn't taking it back. "You were the one that drove him to starve himself, so you need to apologize."

"Kid, get out of my shop." Todd held the door open and Damian stalked through it. "And just add Cilantro to whatever food you want him to eat."

"Cilantro." Damian's voice was flat and he turned around crossing his arms over his chest, mimicking Todd, who then raised his hands and shrugged.

"Don't ask me - you put it on there, he'll eat it. Now get out."

Damian left. There was nothing else to add and he needed to take care of his brother. It wasn't until he made it to the house and was sprinkling some of the herb onto a sandwich that he realized, for the first time since he moved here three months ago; he has referred to Tim as his brother.


End file.
